[Ham-Computers] RE: internet connection/pda phones

[jeff]

James B wrote:
  > If you/anyone have "current" facts to base your response on, that is
> great and I'm willing to hear it, but generally the responses here are
> "Don't use MS products" or "Anything is better than an MS product" 

I thought I allowed for pros and cons but apparently you picked up 
differently.


  > In my profession I use many different OS's (MS, Sun, QNX, Linux, VMS,
> Unix, etc..) and my "opinion" is they all have their pros and cons and
> they all crash at one time or another.

This is good information.

What's interesting is that I also use MS and linux and my experience is 
that MS products uniformly drive me up the wall  [opinion based on using 
them, past and present]


Allow me to be very specific:

I use one W2k/XP and one linux box on my desk at work and at home.
I ride herd on about 20 MS servers at work (two are Win2003).

While W2k server is way more stable than previous versions (desktop 
too), it still drives me nuts with strange errors and things that even 
MS can't explain.  Or they're `aware of the issue and may fix it'.

XP is way too helpful for me.  It insists on helping me so much that I 
hate using it. [I don't react well to their interface]

Linux, otoh, doesn't `help' me by hiding things and I can count the 
number of reboots I've had to initiate on one hand (Django's).  I have 
not experienced the crashes you mentioned.

As for Palms, I've owned the 180 and 650.  The 180 wasn't crash-prone 
but had the aforementioned design flaw of tiny spkr wires going through 
the hinge and breaking regularly.  Surfing was painful.

The 650 does not suffer from that design flaw.  Surfing is less painful 
but still irksome, largely due to the amount of stuff you can fit on a 
screen at one time.  Verizon's speed is... tolerable.

The 650's Palm 5 OS isn't a real stability champ, but I'm reasonably 
certain that's due to 3rd party apps that get `too close' to the OS. Out 
of the box, it's just fine.

I have heard numerous complaints of the 700w's WinMob OS crashing.  I 
have heard complaints of certain apps requiring way too much in the way 
of dragging or keystrokes to make it usable.

The 700's screen is smaller than the 650's to accommodate Windows 
resolution or aspect ratio.

My brother has a non-Palm WinMob phone which has to be rebooted several 
times per day.  To be fair, it could be hardware, but I suspect not 
(haven't heard much else negative about this particular phone).

I belong to several Treo groups.  There are numerous stories about 
people dumping the 700w's (and other WinMob phones) and going back to 650's.

One guy just got a 700p (Palm OS) and loves it at first glance. 
Although they all use the same processor, he said it's snappier.  It 
also gives you a little more RAM than the 650, plus the camera is higher 
def (I used mine for the first time recently and was horrified at the 
output).

The biggest boon of the 700's seems to be the EvDo(?) high-speed 
connectivity, not available with the 650.  Verizon charged you more for 
hooking your laptop into your 650, claiming that was data, not voice. 
I'm not sure about the 700, although it's a good bet.


This is what I know thus far.  I hope I made the delineation between 
fact and opinion clear enough to be understood.



If you have any specific questions, please fire away.  I honestly want 
to give you (and others) useful information to take with you when YOU go 
and do your comparison.

Your needs and likes are necessarily going to be different from mine.
You might like the visual interface so much it'll trump the negatives 
for you.

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